Eirian Houpehttps://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com
Writing the Journey of Infinite PossibilitiesTue, 20 Mar 2018 02:38:52 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/f1ad24325f63abf6648f71c443f0f343?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngEirian Houpehttps://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com
A Big To Do… and Other Moments of Helpful Procrastination.https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/a-big-to-do-and-other-moments-of-helpful-procrastination/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/a-big-to-do-and-other-moments-of-helpful-procrastination/#respondMon, 05 Mar 2018 15:22:48 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=341Continue reading →]]>I have a confession to make. My time management sucks. There… I said it. I have finally admitted what people have been saying to me in response to my assertion – complaints if you like – that I don’t have time to do… well… any number of things that I might have to, need to, or want to do. So, what can I do about it?

In actuality, in working through this issue to try and understand my objection, and to try and answer that question, I’ve discovered that I’m not as bad as all that at time management, what I lack is the ability to manage interruptions – and there are many of those, both of my own and of others’ making.

It was suggested that I start to make lists, and to have a schedule to follow, and as a fully paid up, bona fide member of the ‘anti-list’ ‘anti-schedule’ club, this sent me into an immediate tail spin. I gnashed my teeth, I pushed again the very idea of having a ‘to do’ list, I even questioned – without receiving an answer, I might add – why having a ‘to do’ list felt like a failure… and guess what…? I still didn’t manage to get stuff done – imagine that!

So I bit the bullet, admitted that it was probably a good idea to at least try and use a list to help with managing the things I needed and wanted to do. It was a modest list… because I didn’t want to overload either the list, or myself. Already, I felt overwhelmed at the number of things that needed to be done. My first list had just six things on it. I actually accomplished five of those and the sixth wasn’t done only because it was replaced by a different activity. It could be said to be true that I had made a big ‘to do’ out of having or needing a ‘to do list.’

All Joking aside, I’m still not entirely comfortable with it. I can feel my overzealous inner critic sitting in the back of my head just rubbing their hands, waiting for the day when I have less than most of the items on the daily list crossed off. Just waiting to jump on me and tell me how useless I am, that I can’t even get five or six things finished.

In addition, though I have only done two days of lists, (edit: by the time I finished this post, it has been four lists), only one item on each list not an errand or a ‘chore’ (in the sense of the word that we give to our kids when we say, “do your chores and then you can…”)

This leads me to a question: how can I be present for the important people in my life if I can’t even be present for myself? I think that was at the core of my objections to making lists in the first place, but therein lies the biggest irony of all considering my objections were because I’d have a list full of chores and nothing for myself. I write the list.

You may ask yourself: why is that ironic? It’s ironic because what essentially I have realized is that making a list is actually helpful in making sure that I do something, at least one – maybe two – things for myself each and every day. I can use the list to help restore a sense of balance in my life. Who knew! Here I was, making a “big to do about nothing,” when actually that ‘nothing’ turned out to be a something… and a really helpful something at that.

On another, slightly different, but equally important tangent – you’ll hear many many writers complain that their biggest fault/sin, their biggest downfall is procrastination. Writers are the masters of procrastination. There seems to be some kind of writerly ADHD, where we sit with a blank (or if we’re lucky, a partly worked on) page, and suddenly… “Oooh, the internet… shiny!” or “Oooh, I was going to start that load of laundry, wasn’t I?” or any one of a million other thoughts and distractions that pop into our brains. Well… it may not be the perfect solution, but… make a list!

Let the first act of procrastination in the day be to make a list of all the chores and personal activities that you want to do, and make sure you specifically add at least one entry onto your list that directs you to a writing task. That sets up a commitment to yourself, that you will write; you will make progress on that story, that blog post, that novel… whatever project you have in hand, and make a habit of helpful procrastination.

Funny how life, and life’s paths lead you to consider things your wouldn’t ordinarily have done… and that such things turn out to be helpful. Funnier still, to me, that I, as a member of the anti-list club, have not only found lists to be helpful (so far), but I’m now advocating them as one way, in a repertoire of ways, of avoiding becoming entrapped by procrastination. Less amusing, I’m sure, will be all the people out there that will tell me, “I told you so.” Oh, I’m just poised with my tongue half poked out already, (in playful jest), at such people.

…but schedules…? That’s another kettle of fish, altogether.

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]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/a-big-to-do-and-other-moments-of-helpful-procrastination/feed/0eirianhoupeThorns In the Garden of Roseshttps://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2017/11/04/thorns-in-the-garden-of-roses/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2017/11/04/thorns-in-the-garden-of-roses/#commentsSun, 05 Nov 2017 01:46:33 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=336Continue reading →]]>October 27th’s episode of ABC’s Once Upon A Time, entitled Beauty brought the series-long back and forth that is Rumbelle’s relationship to its ‘final conclusion.’ We saw them live out their life together, happily, blissfully peaceful and so obviously deeply, truly in love with one another, with – at last – nothing to get in their way. Nothing, that is, save old age and the natural progression of life. Belle aged, and Rumple didn’t, because he is immortal, thanks to being the Dark One, and the associated power of the dagger that bears his name.

The acting was superb, as we have come to expect from Robert Carlyle and Emilie deRavin, the episode itself was very sweet and loving, showing Rumple and Belle happier together than they have ever been, and in that respect was somewhat of a comfort for those rooting for the Rumbelle ‘ship that we’ve come to love, thanks in no small part to the onscreen chemistry between Carlyle and deRavin, who cannot be faulted at all, for anything in this episode. This is to be stressed, because in the end, Belle succumbs to her mortality, passing peacefully, and happy to have spent a life with the man she loves eternally, telling him, “You see? You let me go once before and we found our way back to each other. You will find your way back to me again. I promise.”

And therein lies the problem.

Many viewer, and certainly many within the Rumbelle communities have expressed their deep concern that, having let Belle go, Rumple is left alone and grieving, with a new quest – one which Once Upon A Time showrunners have described as, ‘The most important quest of his entire life,’ – to rid himself of the dagger in order to become mortal again and be reunited with Belle in the afterlife. In other words, Rumple is now on a quest to find a way to end his life.

Are the writers and producers of the show trying to say that it’s all right to take your own life in order to be with someone you love? If they are, that’s definitely not okay. Did they simply not see that this is the message that they are giving to viewers who might be in similar and vulnerable emotional states, and now find justification for their suicidal thoughts in the events at the end of, (and presumably after), Beauty – That it’s okay, because that’s what Rumple’s going to do now, right? That’s how he gets his part of Rumbelle’s ‘happy ending.’

I want to stress – to really make it clear here – that in no way is the responsibility for that message being given anything to do with the actors whose superb work gave us all the warmth and happiness that we shared with Belle and Rumple during the course of the series and this episode specifically. No, the blame, the ones truly responsible for such a message are the writers, producers and showrunners, and the network executives who paid no attention to the subtext left by that scene and reinforced at the ending of the episode.

As an educator, I must be 100 percent aware of the message and influence that my words and actions could have on the impressionable minds for which I have a duty of care. Should we not hope for the same thoughtfulness from those who create our arts and contribute to our culture? In a society where ten year olds can steal their parent’s car and take it for a joy ride because that is what they do on their favorite video game; where those accused and convicted of committing crimes of violence and terror are reported as having among their possessions – and presumably therefore had played – violent first person shooter games, and where what we watch is rated according to content to warn against something we might not wish to see, should we not expect a certain degree of sensitivity and forethought from the writers and producers of a primetime, family show that is presented as being about hope? Is the message then that we should hope to die in order to join our lost loved ones, as is Rumple’s only hope now of reunion with the woman he loves who is ‘waiting for him’?

As I write this, I have reached out to ABC for clarification. I will be surprised if I receive a response in a timely manner, if at all. The best ‘solution’ to this problem that we can hope for, as it stands, is that Rumple will find a way to become mortal, but will live for Belle, according to how she would have wanted him to live until the natural ending of his life – an ending that is not hastened in any way, but it is not up to us to correct the problem of the highly inappropriate message.

If you are reading this, and feeling the kind of hopelessness that leads you to feel the only course left to you is to end your life, or if you know someone who is suffering from extreme depression and having thoughts of suicide, please know you are NOT alone. Please reach out to someone for help.

]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2017/11/04/thorns-in-the-garden-of-roses/feed/1eirianhoupeSneaky Peekhttps://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/sneaky-peek/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/sneaky-peek/#respondMon, 02 May 2016 12:10:10 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=294Continue reading →]]>I’m not going to do this every time… but I guess I’m happy and surprised at how much I actually got written last week, so in honor of that, here’s a quick, sneak peek at where the stranded colonists find themselves in the first few chapters.

“Time to atmosphere: sixteen minutes, forty-five seconds.”

Lin staggered as a wave of dizziness assaulted him, and reached out a hand to steady himself against the back of a chair as he lurched across the bridge.

“Tactical confirms, Commander.” Hunt’s voice sounded stronger and steadier than a man rudely awoken from Stasis Sleep had any right to sound.

He glanced at his crewman under the deep red of the tactical lighting conditions. The shadows made the other man’s ordinarily sculptured features look gaunt and drawn, belying the officer’s wellbeing. Hunt looked up then, and his serious expression softened as he met Lin’s gaze. Lin experienced a brief, shared understanding of how lousy he felt and offered the man a wan half-smile, and a curt nod.

Lindsay Derby had woken to a flashing red light on the panel of his LiSSSC. He was disoriented; nauseous from the time spent in an almost complete state of suspended animation – Stasis Sleep. Standard waking called for a good meal followed by a carefully monitored hour or two in the ship’s gym, but the emergency lighting, and the voice of the ship’s System, that had moved like a rolling echo through ZHACC’s empty corridors, attested that this had been anything but a standard waking.

It doesn’t look good – the ship is in a bad way and they are close – way too close – to a planet that they really shouldn’t be even on their radar. How did that happen?

Nikolai Rhostov – Kolya to many that knew him – leaned against the glass of the observation lounge that overlooked the isolation area below. It had started already, and that made him think they were cutting it damn fine, unless they meant to have these people in stasis for years before the expedition launch. Every day there were three, maybe four more people brought to the facility below, given the recommended treatments for people that were about to be put on ice for the next… however long it took, and plugged into the boxes that would be where they would spend the entire journey to their destination.

It was his own, personal ritual: to go there, watch over the induction of the many souls for which he would be singularly responsible during that time. His mind anyway – his brain – once he was given The Treatment.

The second chapter looks back to what had happened before the colonists left the Sol system to head to their new destination. The big question, what is this treatment, and where did it come from?

Memories spiraled like powder-winged moths toward self-sacrifice against the burning in his psyche. Their sudden immolation, brilliant and painful, coated his mind with the sharpness of bitter frustration. He couldn’t wake; he didn’t sleep; he knew nothing of himself but that there was change, inside… outside… he was nothing but difference.

Chapter three, and we’re back in the ‘future’ which is really the present for our colonists, and Kolya wakes after the crash – in part still lost in memory.

Abandon ship… Emergency Protocol Seven…

“…all able crew report to…” Lindsay’s lips felt dry and cracked as he mumbled the words out of his memory.

“Easy, Lin, easy.”

A woman’s voice began to penetrate the confusion. She was familiar, and yet the remembrance of exactly who she was escaped him as surely as did full consciousness. He should know her, but something…

It was the eyes. The vision of them dominated his senses, narrow vertical slits of dark within lavender, a starburst of additional darkness expanding as they looked on him. He could see little of the rest of a face but the slender chisel of a nose. Someone leaned toward him as he tried to move and he felt the press of a hand against his shoulder.

Kolya’s not the only one having a hard time waking after the splashdown. Lin Derby, the expedition commander seems to be experiencing strange visions, and a good deal of confusion too… just what’s going on, and who is the strange being that distracts him from his reality?

It was coming on dawn, or at least he thought it was. The hours seemed to be passing ceaselessly as Kishan worked to try and pull the fragment of message down onto the Portable Interface and so far he wasn’t having much joy. As he worked through the night, the pod’s primary system faded out to an empty green screen with a blinking cursor. He ran diagnostics, and all they showed him was that there was no reason for the computer to fail. It was powered, undamaged…

“So why don’t you just work, you temperamental heap of crap!”

Kishan’s fingers flew ceaselessly over the console, trying to force binary grafts, to breathe life into the only remaining piece of ZHACC that might hold any value to this makeshift colony’s efforts in survival.

Meanwhile Kishan, the System Engineer, is busy trying to get the computer interface back up and running to discover what might have happened to cause the accident. Seems like he’s not having much luck.

After all that, (and the few curves thrown to me during the writing of those chapters) I went back to my process of outlining. I know where I’m going (barring additional curves) I’m just not sure quite how I’ll get there, and I still need a bigger piece of paper.

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]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/05/02/sneaky-peek/feed/0eirianhoupeA Bigger Piece of Paperhttps://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/a-bigger-piece-of-paper/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/a-bigger-piece-of-paper/#respondSat, 02 Apr 2016 01:22:01 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=253Continue reading →]]>The week just coming to a close was spring break. Perfect opportunity for me to sit down and catch up with all the writing that I need to do. Well… okay, so it didn’t quite work out that way, but I had some time each day; was able to put out the next chapter of the work of Middle Earth Fan Fiction that I’m working on; post to Livejournal, and keep up with some Twitter and Facebook posting. Perfect.

Today, though suffering the after effects of a disturbed night, I took a look – a serious, good hard look, at the steps in the process of outlining for Use’ara’s Harm, which will be the first story in the series. I want to start putting the pieces together – it was one of the goals I had for this week – get a coherent outline and start writing in earnest. I very quickly came to the conclusion that I’m going to need a bigger piece of paper.

Probably makes no sense to people in this day and age… computers and all. Here I am after all typing into a blog, through the internet on my computer.

True enough.

I looked back through years and years of posts on Livejournal for an entry I had written – back in 2008 as it happens, that explained my process. I wanted to see if it would work for the Use’ara series the way it did back then, and without giving away too much, (I’m sure I could explain the whole process if demand called for it), here’s an image to kind of demonstrate that – yes – I’m definitely going to need a bigger piece of paper.

That is a standard sized sheet of paper, and formed the basis of the outline of a story that was probably a third of the size that I anticipate Use’ara’s Harm will be. Kolya’s story, for example, navigates three distinct periods in time in UH, likely to take up a lot of the Mind Map. Then there’s the expedition (the humans) thread, and the Use’ara Native Peoples (The Usea and the Raeo), all of whom to fit onto one little sheet…?

A word about those native peoples… it feels strange to have come over eight years in the making of this universe and its multiple dimensions and to have finally settled upon names for what are essentially my ‘good guys’ and my ‘bad guys’ – though it might be better to call them by less binary absolutes… especially as the Raeo are – in some form or another – beings that our human characters have already met, but… (in the words of the Great Professor River Song,) “Spoilers!”

What’s adding to the feeling of needing a bigger piece of paper, is the decision I made to pull some core material from other works I had ongoing, because I felt they would fit better in this one – spinning a few things on their heads in the process – and feeling the need to make something common place in Science Fiction, the notion of instantaneous travel, (teleports, portals etc), somehow new again. I don’t think that’s going to be entirely possible. Someone once said of music that there are only so many ways you can put a finite series of notes together to make a tune… it seems that there are also only a finite number of ways to dismantle someone’s atoms and put them back together in another place than the original… I have to admit, it’s been – still is in some respects – a sticking point for me.

Still, one of those, ‘cross that bridge when you come to it’ moments, and I don’t want to let it hold me back any more. Whether my method of insta-travel remains teleport or becomes dimension gates, or something else entirely remains to be seen. First things first. I need an outline.

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]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/a-bigger-piece-of-paper/feed/0eirianhoupeoutline4“Don’t go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/dont-go-where-the-path-may-lead-go-instead-where-there-is-no-path-and-leave-a-trail/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/dont-go-where-the-path-may-lead-go-instead-where-there-is-no-path-and-leave-a-trail/#respondThu, 24 Mar 2016 17:24:30 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=155Continue reading →]]>(Quotation: Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

Those of you that follow this blog may recall that in the last update, and I hang my head in shame when I confess that this was way back in October of 2014, I expressed the thought that I could now see where Use’ara was taking me and that,

“…the glimmer of a light at the end of a tunnel that may not be an oncoming dragon, but something at least as powerful, and deadly. I’m excited again, but daunted, because if it felt huge before, it feels even bigger now, and somehow to have far more… gravitas…”

Well, that gravitas became a depth that just would not be rushed and turned out to involve a lot of thought and reworking and re-directing of almost the entire structure of Thirteen Stars which has taken a very long time to unravel all the tangled and frayed threads.

Part of why it’s taken so long to get to where I am now ready – I think – to start outlining and then writing is all ‘real life’ matters. Another part of why has involved other projects that are also underway, but always, Use’ara has been pulling me back to the many hours spent percolating the depths and intricacies of the word, the galaxy and the dimensions within those two – and dimensions are something that will come to play an… important role in the lives of those now making their way on Use’ara.

And I’m excited!

I’m excited about the turn and the direction that Use’ara has taken. I’m excited to say that I have finally managed to get both of my websites updated, and I’m also excited to say the least to announce my participation as a creator on Patreon.

If you’ve never heard of Patreon check it out here. Most often used by creators of music and videos, art and comic script/graphic novels, it’s a crowdfunding platform where artist and performers’ supporters (patrons) are rewarded by greater involvement directly with the artist/creator during the process of creation.

Patreon first came to my attention through the involvement of someone who’s become one of my most favorite-of-all-times musicians, a man called Peter Hollens. Seriously, follow this guy, he’s awesome and I’m listening to him as I write this post!

So I went over to Patreon to see what it was all about, and after umming and ahing about it for several weeks – because if you click the filter for writers on their sidebar I think you get four or maybe five creators that come up – I decided that just because few writers choose to be involved, doesn’t mean it couldn’t work and so I thought I’d try it out. If you’d like to go see my profile there, become a patron or even simply just follow me there as you do here – (as you know I try to have original content on each aspect of my writers’ platform) – I’d be happy to have you aboard, and you can find me by following the link below.

Other news:

You may have noticed an overhaul of this website and blog too, to include pages for Butterfly Raven, which if you have an interest in the paranormal, you might be interested in following, as work on this project is also progressing. Also included is a page for Life After: Awakening which is a novel series for young people currently under development, with strong environmental and tolerance themes.

I also have a new post on Medium, and if you didn’t know I wrote there, please jump on over and have a look. Similarly if you didn’t know about my little corner of Livejournal, you can head on over there too and check things out. I’ll be working on a little something for my journal there very soon. Links for everything I’ve talked about here appear below. As always I’ll try to answer any comments and questions and in the meantime, stay happy, healthy and know you are appreciated.

Find Eirian on Patreon

Find Eirian on Medium

Eirian’s Website

cedarfiction.net

Find Peter Hollens on Patreon

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]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/dont-go-where-the-path-may-lead-go-instead-where-there-is-no-path-and-leave-a-trail/feed/0eirianhoupepatreoniconmediumiconeiriwebcedwebpatreonicon“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/it-is-not-the-strongest-or-the-most-intelligent-who-will-survive-but-those-who-can-best-manage-change/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/it-is-not-the-strongest-or-the-most-intelligent-who-will-survive-but-those-who-can-best-manage-change/#respondFri, 03 Oct 2014 16:32:58 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=117Continue reading →]]>(Quotation – Charles Darwin)

Change is good, right?

One of the big cliches in life is that embracing the unknown is a frightening thing. It’s probably a cliche because actually it’s very true. That is after all one of the ways something becomes a cliche in the first place. There have been a lot of changes in my life since my last blog post, and many unknowns to embrace… much fear, and pushing and pulling (internally) a lot of which I didn’t even realize, or certainly not acknowledge, until I was thinking about it, usually while in the shower, over the past few days.

I’ve moved home permanently, not just to a different city, or county, or state, but to a different country. Exciting – but terrifying too. Sure, I have a wonderful support system of people I can go to with all my stupid questions: how do I do…? Where do I go to…? And generally they forgive me all the stupid questions because – love. It’s really quite astounding how much ‘letting go’ in order to move on to where you want to be, is both a welcome relief and a wrench to the heart. It’s also very hard to explain. It’s like – cutting apron strings that tie you to the past – to where you’ve come from.

As a permanent resident of the US now, I have a green card, I also have a social security number. That was when the first snipping of the strings really registered. For 46 years I’d lived with a National Insurance number (the UK equivalent of an SSN) made up of letters and numbers which I could (still can) rattle off at a moment’s notice. All of a sudden I find myself with a new number that I have to look up every time I need it. It’s not unwelcome, but it is different, and strange. *snip* The next slice came just very recently with the acquisition of a US/NC drivers’ license to replace my UK driving licence, yes the difference in spelling is deliberate which is another thing – to embrace the Z and toss out the U, and other subtle changes in all thing concerning literacy.

As I write, the image comes to my mind from the movie Fellowship of the Ring in which Sam and Frodo are tramping across fields, and suddenly Sam stops walking.

“This is it,” says he, and Frodo turns back to face him.
“This is what?”
“If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.”

It’s both true and as far from the truth as could be, for me at least, because, I’m far from home, the home where I was born, but I’m closer to home than I’ve ever been – the home that is my home now: where I want to be. What is home, after all, but a state of being, not a place at all. Of course, like Samwise, there are many, many more steps still for me to take, that I have to take – steps masquerading as ‘red tape’ and unhelpful ‘red tape’ at that… but such is the challenge, such is the measure of my ability to adapt to change, I suppose.

All this has meant that writing, and progress on Use’ara has been… well, slow to pretty much non-existent. The reasons for this are manifold and varied, not least of which that I had stalled, and stalled badly, come up against walls I couldn’t see a way over, or around, and certainly not through… my own personal bear hunt. Another reason involved another ‘change,’ the embracing of another ‘unknown.’ Having said for a long time that I didn’t write a particular genre of novel, mostly because during my earlier attempts at experimenting with that style I didn’t believe it was for me. In going through my files, I discovered the digital manuscript, looked it over with eyes having 20 odd years more experience and decided, yes – I probably could do something with it, and set about a massive edit, the creation of a nom de plume, (for no other reason that to avoid confusion while writing in different genres), and finally the publication, through Amazon Kindle, of the resulting novel… a scary foray into the world of Romance, as Linden S Barclay.

And yet…

Deep in the darker recesses of my mind Use’ara still turns about Her crooked axis, the retrovirus still silently eats away at Her writer’s DNA, subsuming her, changing her, molding her… and the characters, but sending them down deeper, darker and different pathways, until what is emerging is a much more ‘mature’ – and I don’t mean that in the sense of intended readership, but an internal maturity of the world, and characters themselves – and, I hope, accessible onward journey or revelation, struggle and yes… Thirteen Stars.

I had stalled, but now I believe I see a way forward, the glimmer of a light at the end of a tunnel that may not be an oncoming dragon, but something at least as powerful, and deadly. I’m excited again, but daunted, because if it felt huge before, it feels even bigger now, and somehow to have far more… gravitas, for want of a better word.

Now all I have to do is find a way to clone myself to have enough hours in the day to do all the things on my ever lengthening ‘to do’ list.

I miss dreaming – more accurately, I miss being able to remember the dreams I have had.

I spent a good many years teaching myself to remember the dreams I’d had and used to keep a diary of them. It was part of the training for a spiritual discipline/path I walk. A fairly simple process, keep a diary in which you write down the dreams you remember… giving youself permission to remember and slowly, over time, you remember more, and over even more time it is possible to be able to teach yourself to dream lucidly. That, I miss most of all, because therein sits the heart of my creativity.

It’s a conundrum – an issue at present and one which I don’t know how to get around – that for the sake of creativity I need quiet in order to let my mind wander and play with kernels of ideas that might spring to mind, but… not at the time I’m writing. When I’m writing I can have all kinds of noise and hubub (and often do), or, if I need a sharper focus I’ll put on an appropriate piece of music while I write. No, my mind needs the quiet at that time when I’m getting ready to sleep, and to dream, so that my unconscious mind can play with ideas without the interference of my conscious mind. My conscious mind does the work later, once all of the ‘not-thinking’ has been done.

I know this isn’t the case for all people that write. Many that write need to have quiet (even silence) in which to work… with no distractions, and many use noise and being ‘busy’ to prevent their minds chewing the daily cud (or crud), and constantly worrying over things that might be on their minds. That doesn’t work for me, if anything it has the reverse effect.

My issue is that right now, I’m suffering from the old cliche of ‘writer’s block. I’m majorly blocked at the moment because that quiet in preparation for dreaming, and ‘daydreaming’ at other times when I could just switch off and let my mind wander are just not happening, and hasn’t been happening for quite some time. At first I thought I’d be able to find a way to adjust, find a work around, however you want to put it, because I’ve made so many other changes, so many other adjustments, that this is just one more, right? Wrong. The more time passes, the more I’m realising that it’s one step too far for me, as much as I don’t want to admit defeat and in the wake of that, the more fractured my creativity is becoming. I am, as a result, becoming more frustrated and ‘dis-eased’ – certainly unhappy with the way things are, and locked in a spiral of increasing frustration that just increases the inability to adjust, the blockage in my creativity, and the generative part of my writing process. Worst of all, I don’t know what to do about it without imposing my needs upon others.

As an example of my issue, it’s been four days of trying and I still haven’t managed to make any headway in tweaking an outline that needs adjusting, I sit and stare at the open file that contains the outline, and nothing presents itself, because the generative side of the process is stalled, isn’t happening.

Interestingly enough, there was a segment on GMA this morning in which they were talking about the four most common mistakes parents make with toddlers, and the second thing they said was that it was a mistake to keep toddlers busy every single minute of every day. That they need times that look as if they are ‘bored’ during which their minds can wander, and their creativity develop, and I sat staring at the screen then thinking – YES! That’s me! That’s me exactly. I need that. I need that. I don’t need to be kept busy the whole time, doing something every minute of every day, because if it looks to you like I’m doing nothing – or I’m ‘idle’ or whatever, chances are actually I’m hard at work just letting my mind play. That’s being to me – that’s creativity in action.

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]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/some-colors-exist-in-dreams-that-are-not-present-in-the-waking-spectrum/feed/0eirianhoupe“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” On Resisting Negativity.https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/i-have-loved-the-stars-too-fondly-to-be-fearful-of-the-night-on-resisting-negativity/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/i-have-loved-the-stars-too-fondly-to-be-fearful-of-the-night-on-resisting-negativity/#commentsTue, 13 May 2014 17:38:58 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=106Continue reading →]]>I’ve always maintained, and probably will until the day I die, that allowing ourselves to remain in a negative frame of mind is a choice. Sadly it’s a choice from which many – myself included, I am in no way innocent of this fault – prefer to abrogate responsibility. Also, unfortunately, it’s even harder to resist allowing ourselves to fall into the negativity trap when we have a highly developed sense of empathy – particularly with people who are important to you, are family members or are people you love.

Unless we go through life in the bubble, things are going to touch us, and provoke emotional responses to situations and words which are not always going to be the kind that have us jumping for joy at the very thought of such things. No. Life is all about contrasts, and often we must experiences the poles of an emotion in order to fully understand. There’s a saying. It’s a quote from something, and unfortunately I can’t remember where the quote comes from in order to acknowledge the source. It says, “Even the act of lighting a candle casts a shadow,” expressing the truth that there can be no light without darkness, no good without bad, no joy without sorrow. Yes… it is perfectly all right to feel the full spectrum of emotions; healthy, even.

What is most definitely not healthy is dwelling in that ‘shadow.’ Letting it linger, indeed holding on to negativity, be that anger, hurt, disappointment… whatever it is that something has brought to our lives. I’m not advocating ignoring such feelings either, that’s equally as unhealthy. Surely the thing to do is to acknowledge the cause and effect – the feeling – experience it, embrace it, own it… and then let it pass on. Learn from the experience just what it is that makes us tick. Sometimes in finding out those things, we’re afforded the ability to change responses that may have been learned through the course of our life experiences and may be detrimental to our emotional and spiritual health. This becomes impossible and we get locked into harmful patterns if we just dwell in the shadow, live in the past and embrace only the negativity.

Let’s face it, what do we gain from hanging on to such things… from returning over and over again to what has annoyed/disappointed/scared/damaged us? Only a repeat – an echo of the emotion; only more hurt, both to us – because we feel again what we had felt before – and to those around us, whom our behaviour and demeanor affects, often with a harmful result, thus creating a spiral of negativity that hurts all involved, for a shadow tends to deepen and darken the more it is reflected in upon itself.

So how do we, as intelligent, thinking and feeling animals avoid sinking into the negativity around us on a daily basis, and allowing it to control us? Because control us it does. How do we, in the words of an annoyingly catchy little Disney song, ‘Let it go’ – and by that I mean truly, not to just let it pass for the moment only to return at some, as yet, unknown time in the near or far distant future?

It is by no means easy.

It takes continual effort and constant vigilance, and a good dose of self control, but most of all it takes – unsurprisingly – support mechanisms. Maybe, like Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, who can’t sleep until she’s named all of those people she intends to kill, we need to have a ‘naming of names’ ritual of some kind in order to lay our emotions to rest. Feel the emotion, name it, aloud if necessary, and then release it into the universe. Once the emotion has been released, wwe can then look at the effects that it’s had on us and figure out why. It also helps if we have someone who understands us, who can be supportive. Many of us are lucky enough to have such a person – loved one, friend, family member; a trusted person to whom we can talk during the general course of the day, and in times of need, someone who won’t judge, take sides, or impose their own feelings – empathic or otherwise – onto us.

It also helps if we can be ‘objective’ which is notoriously difficult in respect of emotion, ours or anyone else’s (especially as an empath), and I would go so far as to say that anyone who tells us they can, is probably not being entirely truthful, with us or with themselves. That’s a judgement statement but an honest one. Even saints and angels feel. We can only be objective but so far, before our own emotional responses kick in whether we want them to or not… so perhaps a better expectation is to be able to view things from a place of peace… and to do that, we need to have let go of the emotion – another wonderful circle/spiral for us to navigate.

Nicholas Black Elk (1863 – 1950) is quoted to have said, ‘…everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. It’s worth remembering, that we, our place in the world, and our emotions in place within us as a part of the world and the universe, are circular, and cyclical too. It brings a strange kind of comfort and perspective when trying to deal with times of emotional intensity when we can think that way.

Of course knowing what we should do, and doing those things, are two different matters entirely. I’m notoriously bad at it myself, and I acknowledge that. I bottle and I brood… and then I ‘leak,’ and I must confess that my bucket is particularly leaky right around now. As I sit here, reading this back getting ready to post it, I realise that there are a few people out there that might well read this, and think, ‘She’s posted this because of me,’ or ‘Hey, this is about me,’ and either feel hurt, offended or maybe even flattered. Such thoughts, born of ego, are in error, and any feelings that come of such thoughts are a matter for the reader’s conscience alone. ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys,’ as the saying goes.

This post, and my associated feelings have been born – as I recently remarked to at least two people who come to mind – of a struggle of over ten years; ten years in which, for survival sake, I felt I had to adopt a ‘glass half full’ position in a world where everyone presented a ‘glass half empty.’ Now that I’ve finally got around to writing this, and it’s taken a couple of weeks; now that I find myself so damn tired because of that fight, I realise that the error was mine, that I should have simply surrounded myself in the white light of Universal Peace and accepted that the glass simply is.

I surrender.

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]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/i-have-loved-the-stars-too-fondly-to-be-fearful-of-the-night-on-resisting-negativity/feed/1eirianhoupeglassOnen i-Hidh Adanath… Revisited.https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/onen-i-hidh-adanath-revisited/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/onen-i-hidh-adanath-revisited/#respondSun, 04 May 2014 17:46:10 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=94Continue reading →]]>I had reason – by virtue of sharing my blog with a friend – to read over this post and it made me reflect on the things I had written there.

It’s not quite a year since this post was made, and honestly and truly, what has changed? In a way many things, and nothing at all is the short – and somewhat worrying – answer.

I still wonder why it is that I have not been blogging as much as I could have been, and I still do not post my status on Facebook, for much the same reasons I cited in the original post. Visit my Facebook page and you’ll still see photographs, inspirational quotes – a hell of a lot of things to do with Tolkien and The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movies, but very little of a personal nature unless you’re willing to read the truth between the lines – and very few people do.

So it seems that I’m still censoring myself – perhaps even more than before – but for the very same reasons and with the same sense of frustration because I’m still doing what I said I wouldn’t. Here’s the thing though, when I voice my opinion, when I express my feeling… well it’s still easier not to. Far less conflict that way, just the same as before. it shouldn’t. It should have the opposite effect in that it should lead to a deeper understanding of what makes me connect with people and things in the world – give a sense of my place in everything – but, the fact remains – there’s less external conflict.

After the passing of the last year, I’m finally physically where I want to be – with my family in the US. Still going through the process and the red tape of the immigration process – though this is another blog post in and of itself, for another time – but at least I’m here.

Creatively speaking though, the move has been a challenge. Settling into new routines, new ways of doing things, (not to mention a new culture – don’t let anyone tell you that the UK and US don’t have separate cultures), has thrown up some… interesting conundrums, and in a lot of ways that ‘block’ that I mentioned in the original post has remained.

One of the things I’ve come to learn is that my mind requires quiet time, and dream time – and it’s not getting much of either. By quiet time, though, I don’t mean that I need it to be quite in order to write. What I mean is that I need times to lie still and just switch off, let my mind ‘play’ with ideas, that then become the lines of a plot that once I have in place, I can write even if the TV is blaring, the dog barking – whatever the external noise – I can write through it when the quiet times have been experienced – when I’ve had to proper (for me) preparation time.

The Use’ara Cycle is still stalled, though there are stirrings to take it in a slightly different direction to the way I had been approaching it – a way that might well work better if ever I can get it untangled and coherent in my mind. The Life After series is still just as halted, as I’m not quite sure where its threads were going in the first place.

As far as fandom is concerned, I switched back to my first love, as it were, and have been frolicking, (though the material is dark enough that that word is perhaps highly inappropriate), in Middle Earth among the Elves. I entirely blame Peter Jackson for this – in a good way, I hasten to add – and so far it has allowed my sanity to remain relatively unscathed by my level of frustration otherwise at my lack of creativity.

Which brings me full circle to Facebook and blogging again. I said before – a year ago – that I was going to start being more open about what’s going on, on Facebook (though still you won’t find me ‘airing my dirty linen in public,’ which was my complaint before). I haven’t been particularly, except on a couple of occasions. A year on, maybe I’ll have more success. As for blogging – I have, just today, promised a friend that I’ll try to make more than one blog post every six months. Guess I’d better get on that then. It is, after all, something that I want to do.

All I need is the inspiration for subjects about which I could blog.

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]]>https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/onen-i-hidh-adanath-revisited/feed/0eirianhoupeTrue Blue – A Language Equationhttps://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/true-blue-a-language-equation/
https://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/true-blue-a-language-equation/#respondFri, 13 Sep 2013 17:07:24 +0000http://eirianhoupe.wordpress.com/?p=89Continue reading →]]>The other day, as I was scrolling through Facebook and Twitter, I came across a link to this article in a tweet by Anson Mount (@ansonmount) – thank you kindly, sir, for the inspiration – and it started me thinking about language, language use, censorship, et al, not just on television, or in movies, but in books and writing too.

To illustrate, here’s a newsflash, and a confession. It may not be all that surprising to some of you, especially not to those of you that know me well: I have been known to swear, from time to time. When things go wrong, or when emotions are running high, I – like many other people around the world – may well drop an F-bomb or two, or any one of a number of other choice cuss (or curse if you prefer) words. It’s not very ladylike, I know, but it’s the truth. However, as a teacher, I would never do so in the classroom, or on school premises (if I could help it), no matter what had happened. I might growl incoherently, but no actual words. It’s life. We drop a brick on our toe, we cuss, but if we hurt ourselves in front of kids (or grandma), we hop about whimpering and holding our toe.

Therein lies my problem with censorship on television (and in movies and books). If strong language is what would likely come out of a particular character’s mouth in the particular situation then it’s appropriate for them to use said strong language. Am I the only person that is not bothered by this? Does it make me a bad person, to know that a hard nut on a show I’m watching peppers his or her dialogue with the colour blue, and for me not to bat an eyelid? I distinctly remember discussing dialogue with a tutor on a writing course I was taking. At the time we were talking about the use of cliché, but there’s no reason the same rule shouldn’t apply when considering any kind of language. ‘If that’s the way your character talks,’ said he, ‘then there’s nothing wrong with using cliché.’ For me, from a writer’s perspective, which changes the way I watch television as a consumer, that’s the bottom line.

Also, here’s something I wasn’t aware of before: shows have bad language quotas? How old are we, and won’t we notice if our tough-nut, foul mouthed son-of-Satan suddenly stops speaking in the same way? Do the network bosses and ‘powers-that-be’ really believe that as viewers we are so entirely un-discerning that they will still believe in the character that does such a thing? As a viewer, I am personally kind of insulted by that assumption… sucker us in, and then when they think we’re hooked, change everything on us – but wait… are we, am I so unobservant that I don’t notice these things? To be entirely fair to myself, I don’t watch the show mentioned in the article, but now I find myself not trusting some of the other shows I watch or want to watch – not trusting myself.

I’ve been thinking a lot about language of late, in part because I’m at a point in the Use’ara novel where Rhostov has been exposed to one of the natives, and neither of them speak the others’ language, so both are trying to parse meaning from context, gesture and tone. There are no universal translators a la Star Trek, nor is there a TARDIS to help telepathically. They must do it by themselves, and it makes for a few interesting conundrums while writing, in terms of viewpoint, emotional intensity, and even simple communication. It’s something that I’m both loving and hating both at the same time. It makes my brain ache, but how much more would it be; how much would it change with a few curse words thrown into the mix? I mean, poor Rhostov can’t even remember his own name, and that’s enough to make anyone swear up a storm.

On a personal level also, though not quite as intensely, because it’s a process that’s been ongoing for some time now, as I’ve been in a distance relationship with my spouse for the last decade or so, but I am bilingual in English. I speak both British English, and American English. Now, however, I am finally making the move (facilitated by the fall of DOMA and a rather nasty car wreck) to the USA and consciously, my brain is doing two things– trying to remember to use US English all the time – or not, when I’m speaking to my family back home and to my best friend on Yahoo Messenger, and wondering if and when I should also change my spelling.

…thinking about language, but I am not sure that I have yet drawn any conclusions!